Sat, Sep 17, 2011

There’s a whole history here of liberals threatening riots if they don’t get their way. WABC radio host Mark Simone reminded me that back in 1994, Matilda Cuomo warned there would be race riots in New York if her husband Mario weren’t reelected governor in his race against George Pataki.
So now the liberal Mike Bloomberg is trying to go to bat for his pal Obama.

The most important feature of President Obama’s “jobs speech” to Congress last week is this: For the first time in his presidency Barack Obama actually sounded like he really and truly believes that economic incentives matter in the labor market.

Sometimes a politician can be on the right track, even if she doesn’t get things exactly right. “Under President Bachmann you will see gasoline come down below $2 a gallon again,” Rep. Michelle Bachmann recently told voters in South Carolina.

Every single statement Obama makes was carefully calculated to elicit an emotional response. Veterans shouldn’t have to fight for jobs; small businesses must be helped to create jobs; students can’t learn in dilapidated buildings; we must keep policemen and firemen on the streets – every statement true, but none relevant to the actual legislation he proposed.

Kathleen Parker is a proud member of a very select club. She is, in fact, a charter member of a cabal that might be called, for lack of a better term, “Self-Professed Conservatives For Obama”, and whose ranks include Colin Powell, Jeffrey Hart, Peggy Noonan, and Christopher Buckley, among other luminaries.

Main Street wants to string the banks up and let them hang. I don’t blame them. However, there are a lot more folks that deserve to be on the platform with them. Accomplices to the crime you might say.

Clearly Le Pen is an anti-Euro, anti-immigration candidate and that is just the kind of message that can easily catch fire in this environment. Elections in Germany or France may seal the direction, unless we see exodus by countries before the election.

The company is LightSquared, a Virginia wireless broadband provider seeking approval for a coast-to-coast wireless network. The majority owner of LightSquared is Harbinger Capital Partners an investment fund whose CEO, Philip Falcone, is a large Democrat Party donor.

It’s September, so it’s back-to-school for American kids and other children around the world. Many families pack away the swimsuits and beach gear, unpack the notebooks, lunch bags, brand new shoes, and look forward to the regular routine.

Fri, Sep 16, 2011

Seventy years old, Bob Turner was retired with 13 grandchildren, sitting comfortably in the Breezy Point section of Queens, N.Y. to enjoy life and be generous to his church and family. But now he's one of 435 legislators trying to get something constructive done in a town that often seems poised for something very different.

It isn't legal elites and the law school academy that the Supreme Court needs to hear from more often, or appear before on a more regular occasion. It is the people who are affected by their decisions that they ought to be speaking directly to, answering the objections as best they can while avoiding the controversies that will soon be upon them.

People who love reality television often have a special attraction to "train wreck" shows. For two years now, the tasteless titans of the cable channel TLC have been exploiting the spectacle of hyper-ambitious stage mothers parading around "beauty queens" just barely out of diapers in thousand-dollar gowns. The program is titled "Toddlers and Tiaras."?

As part of his warmed-over jobs plan, President Obama is repackaging "Buy American" stimulus subsidies to help hard-hit homegrown businesses. At the same time, however, Congress is pushing to expand a fraud-riddled investor program that puts U.S. citizenship for sale to the highest foreign business bidders.?

President Obama's official re-election campaign has set up a website ostensibly to defend him against false attacks, but its obvious purpose is to smear Republicans and propagandize. What could be more shameless??

The Columbia Spectator is the student newspaper at Columbia University, the school I was once proud to call my alma mater. A report in that newspaper raises the following question: Are leading American universities producing moral illiterates?

Sources familar with the law that governs the loan made under the Solyndra program however say that a plain reading of the law prevents the administration from allowing investors to jump ahead of government guaranteed loans under any circumstances.

At the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Hamilton explained: "Real liberty is not found in the extremes of democracy, but in moderate governments. If we incline too much to democracy, we shall soon shoot into a monarchy, or some other form of dictatorship."

Having passed the 10th anniversary of 9/11, I can now say with certainty that something major was missing from all of the ceremonies, the symbolism and the media coverage. It was something that not only captures the meaning of the attacks themselves, but better defines our response to them than any other single thing. It is the face of the age itself, and it is not Osama bin Laden's.

The campus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison erupted this week after the release of two studies documenting the heavy use of race in deciding which students to admit to the undergraduate and law schools. The evidence of discrimination is undeniable, and the reaction by critics was undeniably dishonest and thuggish.?

Surprise. Despite his "jobs" speech, President Obama's own handpicked White House Office of Management and Budget has just predicted grim employment numbers right through 2012. Well, with that reality in mind, a news flash to the unemployed, the underemployed, and the mainstream media: The jobs are never going to come back under Barack Obama or under the liberal/socialist policies of far-left Democrats. Never.

Imagine 10,000 people being hired in the southern tier of New York, or the outskirts of Detroit, or the suburbs of Las Vegas. Then, picture this being done by each and every corporation that currently hires overseas.

On Valentine's Day 2011, we explored the correlation that appears to exist between what motor gasoline prices are today and what the unemployment rate will be two years from now. At the time, Here's what we found.

There is a “wish list” for House Democrats in the context of the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, which was created as part of the Budget Control Act of 2011. Note the inclusion of taxation of carried interests on the list and in the description.

Housing will not bottom in many areas as long as there is a mile-high stack of foreclosures in the pipeline. Thus the faster forecloses increase the better. The bad news is this process will still take a long time.

At the weekend G7 meeting, Christine Lagarde softened the IMF’s concerns about the capital adequacy of European banks. However, the communiqué reiterated the G7’s support for the Basel III bank regulatory process (that Jamie Dimon says disadvantages U.S. banks)

For more than 30 years, Bat Ye’or, a refugee from Egypt, has been writing about dhimmis – Christians and Jews living under oppression in Muslim lands. Now, she has a new book, Europe, Globalization and the Coming Universal Caliphate, that looks at Muslims living in lands that once were Christian but today call themselves multicultural.

On July 12 California Governor Jerry Brown signed the Fair, Accurate, Inclusive, and Respectful (FAIR) Education Act (SB 48): a law which forces California schools to use textbooks and curriculum that acquaint public school students of all ages with the “historical contributions” of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) persons.

We are used to flag-waving in this country, but we have moved to Constitution-waving as well. Small reprints often inhabit the jacket pockets of men and pocketbooks of women. My desk holds a 3.5-inch by 5-inch copy of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States.

Suddenly, liberal op-ed writers are trashing -- even lampooning -- Barack Obama as a one-term president ("one and done"). Centrist Democrats up for re-election in 2012 openly worry about inviting a kindred president into their districts, lest the supposed new pariah lose them votes.

One factor favoring President Obama's re-election, according to a recent article by political scientist Alan Lichtman, is the absence of scandal in his administration. Lichtman may have spoken too soon.

In February, the administration renegotiated with Solyndra’s billionaire investor- remember the one who was also a big contributor to the Obama campaign?- as the company was failing. That deal allowed billionaire George Kaiser’s foundation to jump ahead of the American taxpayers for all but $150 million of the government’s $527 million loan in any company bankruptcy. Oh, and it’s a transaction that also happens to be illegal.

Let's get this straight once and for all: The vast -- and I mean vast -- majority of those who identify themselves as Republican voters, or as independents who likely will vote in Republican primaries in 2012, has no problems with the tenets and beliefs of the tea party movement.

Cancer treatment has made great progress in recent decades, but the tragedy is that so much of our effort to combat this scourge is just that: treatment. Once a disease appears, there is only so much that can be done. It would be far cheaper, more effective and less traumatic to prevent it.

We are preparing to vamoose Camp Victory just outside of Baghdad. There were once 505 bases for American troops sprinkled around Iraq at the height of our involvement, from whence an American army went out to pacify the bloodthirsty hordes.

Obama is proposing the largest tax hike in US history come 2013. Actually in the Republican debates, John Huntsman comes the closest to getting it right out of all the Presidential candidates out there, including the one sitting in the White House today.

When I visited Europe in 2008 and before, the idea that Europe was not going to emerge as one united political entity was regarded as heresy by many leaders. The European enterprise was seen as a work in progress moving inevitably toward unification — a group of nations committed to a common fate. What was a core vision in 2008 is now gone.

A significant number of corporations from GE to Corning Incorporated, and from US Airways, Inc., to John Deere, would have hundreds of thousands of jobs available if they decided to fire their overseas workers, and bring those jobs back home.

As we did with the individual distribution of income for 2010, we've built a tool you can use to see where you might fall in percentile terms among all U.S. households where your household income is concerned. Click here to access the tool.

Last week, President Obama laid out for Congress and the American public his plan to address the nation’s unemployment crisis. The proposal calls for $447 billion in government stimulus spending, which the president estimates will result in 1.3 million new U.S. jobs by the end of 2012.

More than 1,000 Republican activists and donors crowded into the Richmond Convention Center’s grand ballroom for a state GOP fundraiser and barbeque lunch Wednesday afternoon. The event’s primary draw wasn’t its host, popular Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, or even the generous portions of pulled pork and chicken. No, most of the buzz surrounded the afternoon’s featured speaker: Texas Governor and presidential candidate, Rick Perry.

Last week while thousands of children were outfitted in their "Sunday best" attire to attend memorial services for their parents, victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, some children in suburban Boston were learning a different lesson about America.

Some extremists are targeting my favorite Arizona legislator, Senate President Russell Pearce, because he sponsored Arizona’s illegal immigration bill SB 1070. Deep pockets on the left are funding a recall effort against him.

As a junior in high school, the word “college” is ever present in my mind—and on the lips of my parents. The phrases “grades count,” “you need money; get a job,” and “student loans” have become like background music to my life. From the age of twelve, I have been tucking away my babysitting earnings in the bank in the eager hopes that it would someday become enough to pay for college.

With the scandalous bankruptcy of Solyndra (a shady California solar power company that received $535 million in stimulus funds and is now under investigation by the FBI) hanging overhead, President Obama wisely whitewashed any mention of "green jobs" out of his latest address to Congress.

Ponzi! Ponzi! Ponzi! There, I said it. To the extent people believe there are trust funds with their names on them, Social Security is absolutely a Ponzi scheme. So is Medicare. People need to hear it.

"NBC Nightly News" is the highest-rated daily news show in the morning or evening. In mid-August, the show had been ranked No. 1 for 100 straight weeks, pulling an average of 7.7 million viewers. This makes Brian Williams the king of the TV-news hill.

According to records compiled by the Farm Subsidy database, Lugar received $165,687 in farm subsidies during a decade and half in the Senate, including the six years he spent as chairman of the Senate Agricultural Committee. He also joined the Chicago Climate Exchange. Geesh.

Since the end of World War II, in both the United States and Western Europe, the best way to win a national election has been to be the incumbent political party. But that 3-generation-old predisposition of publics in Western democracies may be coming to an end.

America stands on the brink of economic annihilation. The situation has become that serious. Our president wants to spend an additional $447 billion on random nonsense guaranteed to create zero new jobs; he wants to tax American citizens to pay for it.

The mind wanders. You never know where it'll take you -- high peaks or deep depressions, home sweet home or a juke joint. There's no telling what will set the neurons firing, one flashback following another. Till you're driving down some kudzu-lined two-lane just this side of Kilgore, Tex., with a familiar figure from your past who is much more present than the present. It's said we're lost in thought at such moments, but maybe we're just being found.

Ridiculously false choices and rhetoric ruled the evening when the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers hosted a closed-media conference call with Vice President Joe Biden to inform their members about the latest government school and teachers’ union bailout.

Many of you by now have heard about an event that has taken place each year since 2008 where pastors from across the country look at the positions held by candidates running for office, evaluate how those positions line up with Scripture and, based on that evaluation, either favor or oppose a candidate from the pulpit.

I work for a real estate company, and they’re really pushing us to take advantage of a first-time homebuyer deal. The program offers 100 percent financing, no money down and no private mortgage insurance. They say it’s a great deal. What do you think?

According to data just released by the U.S. Census this morning, in 2010, the median income earned by an individual American was $26,197, or rather, 50% of Americans earned more than that amount and 50% earned less than that amount. The average (or mean) income was $38,337.

These are the same millionaires calling for higher taxes on everyone else. These are the same people that build permanent ski resorts and fight against temporary gas wells. These are the new Marie Antoinettes telling you to have a bite of cake.

Emails obtained by investigators for the House Energy and Commerce Committee and released to ABC News demonstrate how deeply involved the White House was at the highest levels in fast-tracking the approval of the politically well connected start-up in direct conflict with numerous private as well as government warnings that the survival of the company was very doubtful.

Tue, Sep 13, 2011

We are able to consider the lessons of the weekend's mob assault on the Israeli embassy in Cairo because the six Israeli security officers who were on the brink of being slaughtered were rescued at the last moment and spirited out of the country. If the Egyptian commandos hadn't arrived on the scene at the last moment, the situation would have been too explosive for a sober-minded assessment of the rapidly deteriorating situation with our neighbor to the south.

On the Friday after Thanksgiving 1962, Cuban agents planned to detonate 500 kilos of TNT inside Macy's, Gimbel's, Bloomingdale's and Manhattan's Grand Central Terminal. Che Guevara was the head of Cuba's "Foreign Liberation Department" at the time.

In spite of pleas by Christian and Jewish clergy, Mayor Michael Bloomberg steadfastly refused to allow those who had brought spiritual comfort during the 9/11 tragedy to participate in the ten year Memorial at Ground Zero.

Those who are impressed by words seem to think that President Barack Obama made a great speech to Congress last week. But, when you look beyond the rhetoric, what did he say that was fundamentally different from what he has been saying and doing all along?

It seems like yesterday, though it was nearly a decade ago, when the No Child Left Behind Act brought sweeping changes to education across the nation. Now the feds are making sure no child's lunch is left behind, with their overreaching food tampering in local schools.

As someone who was born in the seventies in North Carolina and grew up admiring people like Muhammad Ali, Satchel Paige, and even Malcolm X (Yes, really) that was a pretty good example of the world I grew up in.

It is very disheartening to see Republican presidential primary candidates racing to out-demagogue one another in denouncing Texas Gov. Rick Perry's accurate description of Social Security as a Ponzi scheme.

You might suppose that a political book, appearing less than six months after Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels indicated that he would not run for president, must have been written as a campaign prop. But that's not Daniels' style. "Keeping the Republic" is a deadly serious, though frequently witty, effort to lay before the American people the perilous state of the nation.

The House Energy Committee has been investigating the loan for months. Sources with knowledge of the intentions of the House Energy Committee have said that the investigation into Solyndra has been the committee’s “number one priority” since February of 2011. Their focus shows that they believe some level of wrong-doing was committed high up in the administration in regard to the loans.

Social Security is a "Ponzi scheme for these young people," said Gov. Rick Perry in his first debate as a presidential candidate. "The idea ... that the current program is going to be there for them is a lie."

California Gov. Jerry Brown scored a victory for common sense last week when he vetoed a bill that would have imposed criminal penalties on minors -- or their parents -- who ski or snowboard without a helmet.

Applying a flat corporate tax would take incredible fortitude by politicians because the pressure would be enormous just from those same corporations alone. However, in order to create jobs, it will require thinking outside the box and resisting all outside pressure.

Speaking of immature and overvalued, Paul Krugman wrote a column in the NY Times about 9/11 over the weekend. It was typical Krugman. Full of angst and why America deserved to be attacked on 9/11. He also politicized the after effects of 9/11.

Apparently, the researchers actually believe there are people who do not simply endure their work, but actually receive "joy and excitement." You could call these people happy, or you could call them delusional. Either way, they're not you. Not even close.

My first reaction was to call Vinny McLaughlin and Denny DeCore, who were at the Nomura offices across the street from the WTC, at the world Financial Center. I asked them if they could see what was happening and if they were safe.

Mon, Sep 12, 2011

A fight over the future of Social Security has emerged as a key feature of the struggle between Republican presidential candidates Rick Perry and Mitt Romney. But there is another issue that divides the two and has not received enough attention: immigration.

The normally sensible Forbes Magazine recently named Hillary Clinton the Second Most Powerful Woman in the World. That’s absurd. She’s clearly not even the second most powerful woman in the Obama administration.

As the experiences of recent years in Iraq and Afghanistan have vividly illustrated, it is far easier to depose a regime than it is to govern a country. It has also proved to be very difficult to build a stable government from the remnants of a long-established dictatorial regime.

On the mantle above my fireplace there sits an old picture of my grandfather, Joe Dee Adams, Sr. The picture was taken some time during the Great Depression when he was a professional musician. It was actually his promo picture for the radio show he hosted on WSGN in Birmingham, Alabama. In it, he is holding an old Gibson acoustic guitar.

This is not a country that has a great fear of expressing itself. We have way too much self-love for that. If we were secretly ashamed, we’d go on Oprah and proclaim our secret shame to the world, as many liberals like Krugman have done. Or we'd write a book about it.

Out of sight is out of mind. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano can give the impression she’s doing her job and keeping Americans safe when Americans are unaware of the dangers lurking next door.

America's economy could have collapsed after 9/11, but instead, it rebounded. Its people could have sunk into depression, but we rose to the challenge of rebuilding and supporting those who had lost so much. Taking time to commemorate the sacrifice and loss of so many Americans is fitting; many columns and programs have done so. I prefer to remember how, in the days after 9/11, Americans pulled together to bounce back.

You know you’ve hit the big time when the New York Times does a front page hit piece on you. That’s exactly what happened to Darrell Issa (R-CA) the day before we were scheduled to meet for an interview. While the NYT story contained nothing more than recycled lies and smears, there have been misperceptions about Issa for a long time. In fact, our relationship began that way.

On September 14, 2001 President Bush went to Ground Zero. Standing atop a buried fire truck the President draped an arm over a firefighter wearing a helmet bearing the number "164." Talking through a bullhorn, President Bush began addressing the rescue workers. When someone shouted that they couldn't hear him, the President responded.

When an investor is earning a 4% yield from a stock, he/she is much less likely to panic and sell that stock during a market correction than if the stock paid no dividend at all. Fewer people selling in a panic means fewer ugly share price fluctuations.

I believe something similar is taking place among twenty-somethings on college campuses around the country today. There are many young men and women out there who, like my son, can no longer defend the choice they made in 2008. They’ve seen the prosperity-killing results of big government, unchecked spending and higher taxes first hand, and they’re ready for change.

Watching the situation in Greece is like watching a long, predictable stage play. You already know how it’s going to end and it’s painful wading through lines you’ve heard a hundred times until we get there. You find yourself wishing for a cosmic fast forward button.

OK; that's traditional Keynesian philosophy. The theory being that lower rates get capital moving again in the languishing economy. But, if lower interest rates are the magic elixir for our economic woes, it looks like the market already beat the Fed to the punch, and still the economy is stagnant.

What can be said about the 10th anniversary of 9/11 that hasn’t already been said? I, like most Americans, saw it play out on TV that morning, felt the confusion that faded to disbelief then slowly turned to anger. I can’t say I was sad that day. That came later as what happened really sank in. I felt anger. I still feel the anger.

It's amazing how quiet liberals have become recently in defense of Obama. This was another "big speech" week, but we had no liberals out there defending the president. I don't know. Maybe as his own chief of staff, Bill Daley said, sometimes there is no defending the indefensible.

At a bustling farmers’ market, Trevor Washko worked on a square of leather in his booth of finely stitched journals. To his right was a stand packed with fresh-picked fruits and vegetables; to his left, a cooking demonstration.

In the summer of 1971, the nation was in the doldrums. Inflation was rising, and unemployment was uncomfortably high. The stock market was sinking. Polls indicated President Richard Nixon could lose his 1972 re-election bid.

17 times he said it in his speech this week. 17 times he said it. 17 times he repeated some variation of the need to "Pass this bill now, Pass this bill, Pass this bill right away, Pass this bill immediately."

As the past few years have demonstrated, there are almost certainly grassroots jihadists operating in small cells or as lone wolves who are presently planning attacks. In fact, we know that since at least 1990 there has not been a time when some group of grassroots jihadists somewhere in the United States has not been planning some kind of attack.

Like all previous stimuli, this round of borrowing and spending will act as an economic sedative rather than a stimulant. Running up the deficit in the short-run will not grow the economy, but will merely dig it into a deeper hole.

In 2006 a young woman, born and raised a Muslim, came to America. She had escaped an arranged marriage and fled to the Netherlands where she applied for asylum. While in Holland, this woman fell in love with Enlightenment values and became a leading activist in the cause for reform of sharia laws. This woman's name is Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

The Washington National Cathedral, in its commemoration of the 10th anniversary of 9/11, has deliberately and carefully excluded evangelicals from their multi-religious commemoration. The service includes Buddhists, Hindus, and Muslims, but not evangelical Christians.

The demise of Solyndra has already sparked an FBI investigation, congressional hearings, and raised numerous questions of political cronyism and corruption connected to the highest levels of the Obama Administration. Highest levels.

I still have my unused airline ticket from September 11, 2001, ten years ago today. My wife and I had flown to Washington for a week’s vacation that included a White House tour, a visit with our Congressman, and some play time in the Atlantic Ocean. We were driving our rental car back to the airport late that Tuesday morning to catch our flight home when we heard the news that changed all of us.

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